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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23785648">Denial</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/pushingclovers/pseuds/pushingclovers'>pushingclovers</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sam &amp; Max</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Five Stages of Grief, Future Max is there for a very small bit, Gen, Grief/Mourning, MAJOR spoilers for 305, for literally the whole thing, he knows already whats to come, it doesn’t actually happen in this, plus a bit of a headcanon for how Max’s time went with the elevator, spoilers it wasn’t great, the major character death is there cos it’s mentioned, theres no dialogue jus max being a big dumb and ignoring his trauma, this uses the crimefighting ending</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 21:41:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>981</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23785648</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/pushingclovers/pseuds/pushingclovers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The grieving process still goes on, even if the person you lost is still there with you.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Denial</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Max’s time without Sam was a hell of a lot longer than Sam’s time without him. With figuring out how to work the elevator, then finding the right card and number sequence, it took him a grand total of 5 months and 24 days to find a Max-sized hole to fill, and take his place as Sam’s partner once again, replacing whatever poor sap came before him.</p>
<p>That’s all he ever let himself think of himself as. A replacement.</p>
<p>Max spent a long time just mashing random buttons, popping in and out of timelines, sometimes even existence itself (the time before, well, time was just weird. Why was there a chicken again?), before he finally remembered the time cards still stowed in the slots outside. He spent a shorter time going through them, trying to find something to get him back to Sam. A Sam, at the very least, one that didn’t have a Max. He didn’t know much about the science behind time travel and paradoxes (or science, period), but he was pretty sure having two of the same being at the same age counted as one if he stayed too long or they touched or something. </p>
<p>He saved the Intergalactic Freelance Police card for last for whatever reason. His future self had looked so ready to give a snarky comment about his and Future Sam’s primitive selves returning, only for it to die in his throat when he saw that Max was alone. </p>
<p>From there, he was given the modified carbon dater, a blank card, and a sickeningly pitiful look from Future Max. Two months of scanning, button-pressing, and absolutely no nervous breakdowns (ha-ha), and he had finally found himself at Battery Park, watching Sam stare wistfully at the half-destroyed Statue of Liberty. After a thankfully tearless reunion, at least on his end, they simply fell back into their old routine of fighting crime and tormenting the residents of Straight Street. Both conveniently ignored that the number of neighbors was now significantly smaller.</p>
<p>He never told this Sam about it, about his actual feelings about what he dubbed as simply The Incident, and he didn’t plan to anytime soon. He hated thinking about it, hated remembering how absolutely useless he was, hated knowing that he was too slow to do something. Hated remembering the absolute horror of watching his best friend since birth literally crash and burn right before his eyes, when he could have saved him. He could have <em>saved him</em>. He avoided talking about it like it was the plague, and if the subject ever did happen to come up, he’d just hide his guilt (he refused to acknowledge that it was partially grief, too) behind his usual brand of morbid humor.</p>
<p>Sam didn’t like talking about his Max, either. Which was understandable, considering that Max had shown up only two hours after whatever happened. He could only assume that something similar happened, given Sam’s sudden aversion to fire, especially when it was close to Max’s head. That, and he’d developed the habit of brooding for hours on end, just slumped over his desk and staring at nothing or watching Max endlessly until the Commissioner called them with an assignment. The dog was almost irritatingly protective over him now; if their perp so much as touched a tiny piece of fur on any part of him, they’d very quickly have hell to pay at the unnecessarily violent paws of his partner. Once upon a time, he might’ve found it endearing, even adorable that Sam would do such a thing for little ol’ him, but after The Incident, it just unnerved him. It made him think about whether this timeline was as similar as he thought it was, minus the key difference of their roles being swapped. Whether this Sam had to deal with his Max losing his...he hated thinking about it.</p>
<p>As Max lays awake, staring up at the ceiling after another nightmare (thunderstorm, giant eldritch horror dog, the usual stuff), he finds himself thinking about these things, the behavior changes in both of them. A long time ago, back when he was still new in this line, he’d gone to Sybil on a whim, hoping to gain some wisdom from her experience with not only psychoanalysis but also the Freelance Police (well, the complete version) in general. He’d scoffed when she suggested that they were still grieving each other, that was ridiculous! You couldn’t grieve someone who was right next to you, someone you never actually lost. But now that he was actually considering it, it…made an unnerving amount of sense.</p>
<p>He was in denial, especially then. He was pretty sure Sam was too. The way they skirted around the topic as much as possible, giving vague answers to everything regarding anything close to it, ignoring everything that happened. Pretending everything was okay. Pretending that Max actually <em>belonged</em> there (or maybe that was just him).</p>
<p>He can’t help but feel severely out of place as he listens to Sam’s snoring below him, letting the sudden revelation soak in. He was still just a replacement, like the plywood that now covered the hole in the wall in their office. Just less temporary. There was no option for this Sam’s Max to come back, just as there was no option for Max to go back to his Sam. They were stuck together, whether they liked it or not. Not for the first time since he showed up, Max wonders if maybe it would have been better if he’d just stayed in his own timeline and dealt with the consequences and mushy feelings he hated.</p>
<p>But still, he can’t help but selfishly hope that, somehow, this Sam thinks of him as his little buddy, as always. The thought of that reality, no matter how out of reach it seemed to him, comforted him, if only a little.</p>
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